Dream Stalkers

by Tim Waggoner

  Connie probably knew I was lying. She’s no dummy. But she smiled and nodded, showing me that she appreciated my attempt to reassure her. The Fata Morgana surely knew I was full of shit, but she didn’t call me on it, and for that I was grateful.

  “What now?” the Fata Morgana asked.

  “Now you get back in the car and wait with Connie,” I said.

  Anger clouded her face, and I thought she might argue, but then the energy drained out of her and she sighed.

  “Fine. I’m tired anyway. I’m not the Incubus I once was.”

  She got back into the Deathmobile, but, before she could close the door, I said, “Do you think you can contact the other Lords?” I almost added, If any are left.

  “I could try contacting them telepathically, I suppose. But, as I said, I’m rather tired.”

  “Give it your best shot. At this point, the Lords of Misrule might be Nod’s – and Earth’s – only hope.”

  She raised an eyebrow at that, but she nodded, and then, with an effort, she pulled the Deathmobile’s door shut.

  Jinx tossed his sopping handkerchief aside, and it hit the concrete with a wet smack. He picked up a gore-smeared Cuthbert Junior and walked over to join me. He was covered with blood from head to toe, and I wondered if he should start wearing a plastic coverall over his uniform. It would save a ton on dry cleaning.

  The two of us started toward the Sick House’s entrance.

  “Allying with the Lords?” Jinx said. “Sounds like a plan I would’ve come up with.”

  “Fucked-up times call for fucked-up measures,” I said.

  “True dat,” Jinx said.

  The double glass doors opened automatically for us, and we stepped inside. The reception area still had the acrid medicine and bleach odor that hospitals always seem to have, no matter the dimension. But the area was empty, and very, very quiet.

  “Maybe everyone’s in the rest room,” Jinx said.

  “Let’s go see if Menendez is in his office.”

  “I’m telling you, we should check the crappers first.”

  As we made our way through the corridors of the Sick House, we continued to see and hear a whole lot of nothing. We peeked into a few patient rooms, but they were all empty, the beds made as if no one had ever used them.

  “I’ve never slept, so I’ve never dreamed,” Jinx said. “But from what you’ve told me, and what I’ve seen in movies and on TV, as well as what I – or at least Sunshine Boy – has read, this is kind of like being in a dream, isn’t it?”

  Sunshine Boy is how Night Jinx sometimes refers to his Day Aspect.

  He went on. “We’re walking through a deserted hospital, the only sounds our breathing and our footsteps… I assume this is the sort of experience that humans find disquieting.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Now that you mention it, this is like a scenario out of a nightmare.” I wasn’t liking where this conversation was going. “Are you suggesting that we’re trapped in dream?”

  He shrugged. “That’s what the Church of the First Dreamer believes, isn’t it? That all of us exist inside the First Dreamer’s dream? So, what if that dream’s gotten messed up somehow?”

  Jinx’s words shook me to the core. Maybe the Wakening prophesied in the Primongenium actually was happening. I wanted to tell Jinx that he was full of shit, especially because I was afraid he wasn’t. But, before I could say anything, the sound of slow clapping came from behind us.

  “I never would’ve guessed the clown would figure it out.” A woman’s voice. “You?”

  “Never in a million years.” Another woman.

  I recognized both voices, and when Jinx and I turned around we found ourselves facing Melody and Trauma Doll.

  Thirteen

  Melody aimed one of the strange obsidian hand weapons at us – the kind that bored through flesh and bone as if they were butter – and Trauma Doll was wrapped in her barbed wire coils once again.

  “You’re looking remarkably well, Melody,” I said. Jinx’s reaction was less restrained.

  “Honey-pie!” He rushed forward, arms spread wide, clearly intending to envelop Trauma Doll in a big bear hug. Trauma Doll’s porcelain features twisted into a sneer, and she flicked her right arm. Coils of barbed wire shot forward, she swept her arm sideways, and the wire struck Jinx like a whip. Barbs cut into the right side of his face, shredding his chalk-white skin. Blood gushed from his wounds and splattered onto the tiled floor.

  “Aw, sweetie,” Jinx said. “I,” – he paused to spit out some blood that had gotten in his mouth – “I love you too.”

  Despite his words, his gaze was ice-cold.

  “But before we go any further…” He reached into his pocket and removed a tuning fork. He slapped it against the palm of his hand, and the fork vibrated, emitting a high-pitched tone.

  The deadly black weapon began to shake in Melody’s hand, and then it exploded in a shower of ebon crystals. She swore and averted her face, but some of the shards still managed to cut into her hand and neck.

  “Another toy you picked up at Misery Loves Company?” I asked Jinx.

  He grinned as he put the tuning fork away. “Yep. Just in case.”

  Melody turned to face us once more, her neck and cheek stippled with blood. “Null guns are kick-ass weapons, but, unfortunately, they’re a bit fragile.” She wore a trancer holstered at her side, and she drew it now. “Trancers might not pack the same punch, but they are sturdier.”

  Blood from her wounded hand flowed around the trancer’s handle and dripped onto the floor. She glanced down.

  “Inconvenient, but easily mended,” Melody said. “Especially when you share your body with an Incubus.”

  Her form blurred and she became the Gingerdread Man. He still held the trancer on us.

  “Or two,” he said.

  His form blurred, and became the bat-headed woman who’d followed us to Deadlock. She grinned. “They call me Badfang,” she said, and then another shift occurred and Melody stood before us once more. The wounds on her face, neck, and hand were gone.

  “I could’ve healed the damage Montrose did to me anytime,” she said. “All I had to do was let one of the Incubi take over. Their healing powers would’ve taken care of my injuries within a matter of moments.” She smiled. “As you just saw.”

  “But you didn’t, because you didn’t want to give yourself – or maybe I should say selves – away,” I said.

  I looked at Trauma Doll. The coils she’d lashed Jinx with had wrapped themselves back around her arm, and Jinx’s blood dripped from the barbs.

  “I suppose you’re Demonique and the giant earwig,” I said.

  “Sligan is his name,” she said, “and yes.”

  Jinx’s facial wound still bled like hell, but was already in the process of healing.

  “I’m an open-minded guy,” he said, “and ordinarily I’d be willing to explore a polyamorous relationship, but I have a real thing about earwigs. They are, in a word, ass-nasty.”

  Trauma Doll’s body blurred and was replaced by the giant insect. Sligan stood upright, but he fell forward onto his six legs and scuttled toward Jinx, large mandibles click-clacking as he came. Jinx – his wound still looking awful but no longer bleeding – drew Cuthbert Junior and slammed the hammer down on Sligan’s head. There was a horrible crunching sound and whitish gunk splattered over the floor. Sligan’s mandibles stopped click-clacking, and his segmented legs twitched spasmodically.

  “Okay,” Jinx said, “now we can talk. I think Demonique is kind of hot anyway.”

  Sligan transformed into Demonique, and she shoved Jinx’s hammer aside, moved into a crouching position, opened her mouth wide, and released a gout of flame.

  “That hot enough for you?” she said.

  The flames engulfed Jinx and he dropped Cuthbert Junior and started jumping around, screaming, “Too hot! Too hot!”

  For an instant, I felt Jinx’s pain as if it were my own, and I thought we’d switched bodies. But it di
dn’t happen. I still felt our link, but I didn’t feel the same irresistible pull to switch that I’d experienced before. Maybe Jinx was purposely keeping me out of his body to spare me pain. Or maybe something else was happening – or, more to the point, not happening.

  Jinx pulled a giant water balloon the size of a beanbag chair from his jacket and hit himself in the face with it. The balloon exploded, water gushed, and the fire went out, leaving him looking like a scorched and drowned rat.

  He looked at Demonique as she rose to her feet.

  “Some guys don’t like it when a woman comes on too strong, but I consider it a challenge.” He grinned, displaying teeth as sharp as a shark’s.

  Demonique didn’t make another move to attack, and Jinx picked up his hammer but kept his distance. He can take a lot of damage, even for an Incubus, but he would use every moment of healing he could get before the fighting began in earnest.

  I looked at Melody.

  “You both took two hits of shuteye?”

  She nodded. “Not everyone can host even one Discarnate. Your mentor went crazy with just one in him. But Trauma Doll and I are special.”

  Demonique blurred into Trauma Doll and grinned at Melody.

  “You got that right, sister. Tough as fucking nails, that’s us.”

  “Where’s Menendez?” I asked.

  “Not here,” Melody said. “No one’s here, except for us.”

  “We’ve got the whole place to ourselves,” Trauma Doll said. She smiled. “Lots of room to play.”

  “I assume you’re both Wakenists,” I said.

  “Yes,” Melody said. “Reality is fucked up, especially Earthside. Poverty, war, pollution, climate change, racism, sexism… I could go on, but you get the point. Reality isn’t a dream; it’s a nightmare.”

  “Time to hit the reset button,” Trauma Doll said. “Start over and get it right this time.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?” I asked. “Wake up the First Dreamer – assuming he’s real and you can actually find him – and force him to dream reality the way you want it to be?”

  “He’s real, all right,” Trauma Doll said. “And finding him is no great trick. He’s in the Idyllon, where he’s always been.”

  Her words caught me off guard. “Seriously?”

  “Sure,” Melody said. “Just like the Unwakened sleep on the highest level of the Rookery, the First Dreamer sleeps at the top of the Idyllon, in the Sacrarium. The Idyllon was the first thing the Dreamer brought into existence. Nod formed around it, and then, once he fell deeper into sleep, he created Earth’s universe, and everything in it.”

  “Only the highest of priests know the truth, though,” Trauma Doll said. “The Church doesn’t want the truth to get out, or else every Wakenist nutcase would try to break into the Sacrarium and wake the Dreamer.”

  “So, how did you find out the truth?” I asked.

  “Shuteye,” Jinx said. “One of the priests took some and became host to a Discarnate.”

  “Something like that,” Melody said. “The Discarnate realized they could control the First Dreamer, they could alter reality and gain new bodies of their own. So shuteye was brought to the Idyllon, and the church’s upper echelon was encouraged to take it – one way or another. Some died, some went insane, but the majority became hosts for other Discarnate.”

  “And they began trying to rouse the First Dreamer,” I said.

  “And they reached out to Wakenists to host other Discarnate to infiltrate various Earth and Nod institutions – such as the Shadow Watch – to make sure no one could interfere with them.”

  “You were an important assignment for us,” Trauma Doll said. “We had to bust our asses to get assigned as your trainees, but, after you stopped the Fata Morgana, everyone thought you two were hot shit, and the Discarnate figured you might be able to stop us if you got wind of what was happening.”

  “You could’ve killed us at any time,” I said. “Why wait so long?”

  “No point in showing our hand before we had to,” Melody said. “But, after the incident with Montrose, it was decided you’d become more trouble than you were worth, and we got the word to take you out.”

  “Who gave the word?” I asked.

  “What does it matter?” Trauma Doll said. “You managed to give us a good chase, but it’s over now.”

  “Killing you isn’t even going to be much fun,” Melody said. “It’s not like you’re going to give us any challenge.”

  “Right,” Trauma Doll said. “You aren’t heroes. Not even close. You’re just a couple of screw-ups who get lucky once in a while. But now your luck’s run out.”

  “We may be a couple screw-ups,” I said, “but we’re still going to kick your asses. All six of them.”

  “Five,” Jinx reminded me. “I squashed the bug, remember?”

  “Right. Forgot about that.”

  “Besides, since he was a bug, I don’t think he technically had an ass.”

  “Point noted.”

  Melody and Trauma Doll exchanged glances. They no longer looked quite as confident as they had a moment ago.

  “You get that we lured you here to kill you, right?” Melody said. “Demonique called you and pretended to be a nurse. You’d heard her voice the least, so we figured you wouldn’t recognize it.”

  “Of course, you won’t stay dead,” Trauma Doll said. “When the New Dream begins, you’ll be brought back into existence. But you’ll have had an attitude adjustment.”

  “You’ll like the New Dream,” Melody said. “Everyone will. They won’t have a choice.”

  “But that’s cool because it will be the ultimate utopia,” Trauma Doll said. “Who wouldn’t love it?”

  “Think of it,” Melody said. “No more crime, no more suffering. No more division between humans and Incubi. It’s going to be glorious!”

  “And how’s this New Dream going to come into being?” I asked.

  “None of your damn business,” Trauma Doll snapped. “You think we’re dumb enough to stand here and let you pump us for information?”

  Now it was Jinx’s and my turn to exchange looks.

  “She’s kidding, right?” I said.

  “If they keep up like they have been, we’re going to know their bank account numbers and their Internet passwords,” Jinx said. His face was completely healed by now, and he gripped Cuthbert Junior tight. He was back at full strength and ready for action.

  “I think we’ve gotten all we’re going to get out of them,” I said.

  “I concur.” Jinx grinned inhumanly wide. “Time to cause some damage.”

  He hurled Cuthbert Junior toward Melody. She transformed into Gingerdread Man and, with his speed, easily sidestepped the hammer. The Gingerdread Man’s cookie hands were shaped like mittens – one fingerless mass with a thick opposable thumb – and he couldn’t fire Melody’s trancer, let alone maintain a solid grip on it. The gun fell to the floor as Jinx’s hammer flew through the space where Gingerdread Man had been standing and slammed into the wall behind. The sledge bashed a large hole and stuck there, the handle sticking out.

  Trauma Doll shot her barbed wire coils at me, and I dove to the side, pain shooting through the shoulder wound I’d sustained when the Darkun’s shard had struck me. Without Jinx’s healing ability, I couldn’t afford to let Trauma Doll’s barbs cut into my flesh. The coils lashed through the air over my head as I hit, rolled, and came back up onto my feet. I quickly shrugged off my jacket and wrapped it around my left arm. The cloth wouldn’t be much protection against Trauma Doll’s coils, but at least it was something.

  Gingerdread Man raced toward Jinx, moving inhumanly fast. But Jinx can also move pretty damn fast when he wants to. Before Gingerdread Man could reach him, Jinx raised his right leg and pointed the bottom of his enormous shoe at the onrushing Incubus. The shoe bottom flipped open and a coiled spring shot forward. It struck Gingerdread Man in the stomach and drilled a large hole through his abdomen. Bits of cookie sprayed the air,
and Gingerdread Man – who’d built up some serious momentum – continued moving forward. The result: he broke in two, and both halves fell to the floor. Jinx’s spring retracted, the shoe bottom snicked back into place, and he lowered his foot.

  Trauma Doll saw Gingerdread Man go down, and she forgot about me. She spun toward Jinx, changed into Demonique, and unleashed a burst of flame at him. I didn’t wait to see what happened. I started running for the trancer that Gingerdread Man had dropped. As I ran, I began to feel the familiar dizziness that told me Jinx and I were on the verge of exchanging bodies, but I did my best to fight it. Jinx and I had gotten used to fighting while inhabiting each other’s body, but, if we exchanged now, we’d be dead within seconds. Not only were Trauma Doll and Melody dangerous enough on their own, their ability to allow the Discarnates they hosted to take over their bodies made them much more deadly. Jinx and I couldn’t afford so much as a moment’s hesitation or confusion if we hoped to survive. So, no Blending. Not if I could help it.

  As I made for the trancer, I caught a glimpse of Gingerdread Man, or, rather, his two halves. He didn’t appear to be in any pain, but his top half was using its hands to pull itself toward his bottom. I thought that it must be inconvenient being a living cookie, and I wondered what would happen if he were dropped into a giant glass of milk.

  I reached the trancer, snatched it up off the floor, and spun around in time to see Jinx – once again on fire, thanks to Demonique – hurling handfuls of razor-edged confetti at the reptilian Incubus. The confetti swirled around her like a mini tornado, each tiny piece slicing into her scaled flesh again and again, until she was covered with small bleeding wounds. Each wound wasn’t much in and of itself, but there were hundreds upon hundreds of pieces of confetti, and they quickly transformed her into a blood-soaked mess. She howled in pain and fury and attempted to burn the confetti with her flame, but there was simply too much of it for her to destroy. Blood pooled on the floor around her feet and began expanding outward.